Day: November 22, 2016

HAWK Zeb Cooke ran a cowboy game at last Friday’s club meeting using Combat Patrol(TM).  Players controlled posses, gangs, units, etc. vying for control of the town and possession of gold, cattle, and a saucy bar wench.  (I may have made up that last bit.)

By all accounts the rules worked just fine for the cowboy period without modification.  All Zeb had to do was build unit records with different weapons on them to reflect the technology of the day.

The little cards in the foreground represent cattle.  Zeb had printed cows on the tent-folded cards.

There was a rules misunderstanding regarding shotguns that made them overly powerful in the game.  They were doubling the rate of fire on double barreled shotguns, but the base rules, written for WWII, assumed the rate of fire for pump-action shotguns.  Doubling the rate of fire from the base rules made them nuclear weapons.

In the post-game kibitzing on the drive home, Duncan and I talked about whether the normal command radius should apply to cowboy games.  As I think on it, I think for units, like cavalry and infantry, they should still use the command radius.  For groups that would be essentially main characters in a movie, you could suspect the command radius or make it very, very generous.  I think in a cowboy game you want guys running all over the table causing mischief.

We had a couple of new gamers who had not played Combat Patrol(TM).  I was playing in another game at the time, but I heard that they both enjoyed the game and picked it up quickly.

I purchased three bags of Pulp Figures Indians at Historicon in a pre-order deal.  These are meant to be for the Flint and Feather rules by Howard Whitehouse.  The game takes place between warring bands of Indians before the arrival of Europeans.  These have been 75% done for three months, awaiting me to prioritize them high enough in the queue to finish them.

There were 15 poses in all.  A couple seemed to be so close as to be duplicates — but not quite.

I haven’t played Flint and Feather yet.  I understand it is much like Battle Troll or Outlaws of Sherwood, also by Howard Whitehouse.  Those are very fun games with just a handful of figures, so I’m sure that Flint and Feather is similar and equally enjoyable.  I plan to use these Indians for games against early settlers armed with arquebuses and pikes.

I often have figures on the table that are partially painted.  Then in one good painting day, I’ll finish a bunch, leading to a feat or famine feeling to this blog.  Yesterday afternoon I managed to finish some 28mm WWII Poles from Warlord that have been partially painted for about a month.  I had hoped to finish them in time to use them in my Combat Patrol(TM) games at Fall In, but I didn’t get them done in time.

These figures are from the Polish headquarters set.  This set includes a light mortar, two anti-tank rifles, a light machine-gun, a medic, and a couple of officer figures.

In previous posts I have shown my Polish armored train from Sarissa Precision.  I was looking for a Bofors anti-aircraft gun to mount on top of it.  Warlord makes one for the BEF, but not for the Poles.  When I ordered the gun, Warlord generously included a sprue of Polish heads.  I swapped the heads to create this Polish anti-aircraft gun.

I haven’t finished the base yet, and I still need to paint the tires.  The gun comes off the ground most and will fit on the armored train.  I can use it in games as either ground mounted or mounted on the train.

Conventions are meant to foster the free exchange of ideas.  Greg, one of the guys in our gaming group, saw at Fall In 2016 that the folks in Canada who play a lot of This is Not a Test made nice game markers.  He told me about it, and when I returned from the convention, I ordered the bottle cap covers and hole punch from Amazon.

Apparently girls are making jewelry from bottle caps.  I understand that people even sell bottle caps that were never on a bottle but have pretty designs.  To protect the paint on the top of the bottle cap, someone started producing these self-adhesive, clear, slightly bevelled bottle cap covers.  They are made form a very soft rubber and come in sheets.

I made some markers in Power Point and printed them on card stock.  Then I used a one-inch hole punch to cut them out nicely.  I peeled the clear bottle caps from the plastic sheet and stuck them to the markers.  The result looks pretty nice.  Be careful when remove the covers from the plastic; if you touch the sticky side, you will leave finger prints.